Leveling Like Crazy

21Jan

As I knew would be the case, Cataclysm’s release and the massive changes to all of the classes has put me in a huge leveling craze. I’ve leveled my “main” characters, the one’s that had been at 80 for months during Wrath, and I’ve done a lot of rerolling of my remaining mid-level characters and also a lot of rolling new toons.

My intentions going into Cataclysm were to strictly stick to leveling brand new toons so that I could explore all of the new zones, check out the completed versions of all of the new racial starting zones, and experience the classes with their new talent trees. For the most part I stuck with that, though I haven’t done nearly as much exploration into refinished zones as I had planned, and I’ve spend way more time on my high levels than I ever anticipated.

As usual though, I have to fill your screen with other bits of slightly relevant information before I get to the point of this post. So go ahead and carry on reading, the titles give a fair description of what each section is about.

Psynister Breaks His Intentions
After playing around on a number of new toons I ended up leveling my Druid (Balance/Resto) to 85. The main reason, initially, that I did this was to check out the new high level zones a bit and level my professions (Herb/Inscription), and then I stumbled onto Deepholm and the insane number of herb nodes there and I went farm-crazy. Hundreds upon hundreds of herbs were mine to collect and they were everywhere It was insane seeing up to 9 herb nodes on my minimap at a time, and I loved it. At least until it got nerfed.

Once I had my Inscription maxed though I couldn’t just pass up the opportunity to level other professions and that led to me focusing on my high levels far more than any others, especially with the professions node nerfs that hit right in the middle of me doing all of that. Professions took priority over leveling for a while and that led to making gold.

My Mage came next so I powered his Alchemy from the herbs I hadn’t milled yet, and then I got started on powering his Enchanting when I suddenly ran out of mats and just didn’t want to spend that kind of gold on mats in the AH. I know that the easiest way to get those mats though is to hit up a Jewelcrafter (my wife), so I switched over to my 80 Death Knight (Miner, Blacksmith).

I started leveling him so that he could mine ore so that I could have my wife prospect it and turn it into jewelry and fist weapons. I then decided his Blacksmithing wasn’t worth the investment so I swapped him over to Skinning instead and got it to 525 in no time. I got my ore and was sending it over and making a lot of progress. The Mage’s enchanting hit 525 and I was making some great money selling the blue quality items that my wife was making for me.

My Alchemy was bringing in good money from transmutes so I decided to drop the 525 Skinning on my DK and make him an Alchemist as well. Goodbye 7,000g, I barely knew ye.

Skinning was profitable, but I could do better farming with a different toon, so I transferred my Paladin from a horde server over to my Alliance server and made him a human. He was a 525 Mining, 535 Enchanting and I knew I didn’t need the mining since the DK had that covered and there was no point in keeping the Enchanting since my Mage had it covered, so I dropped both of his professions and he became a Skinner/Tailor. He’s been a tailor before, so before you scoff at my Prot Paladin’s knitting hooks you might want to consider how much faster I can grind cloth with my extra 50% chance at cloth drops than you can…yeah, I thought you’d see it my way.

Psynister Makes a Boo Boo
I had spent a lot of gold on various things, none of it gear, and my gold had gotten really low. I managed to get it back up to around 17,000 total and then I made a stupid error on one of my addons. This error happened before I brought the Paladin over, and I think it was just before the DK switched his BS for Skinning, but I might be a little bit off. Not important to the story, though.

Auctioneer has a wonderful little feature called the Snatch List that helps you buy materials in mass by setting a price and then buying everything that’s under that price. I’ve used it for months to make a lot of gold. Once you tell it to buy everything you have to confirm every purchase by clicking the OK button, but I’d grown so familiar with it that I clicked on the Purchase All button and then just put my mouse over OK and started clicking away while I read some blog posts on the other monitor.

I glanced back in between blog posts to see how many more items I needed to buy when I saw a message flashing up on the screen, “Not enough gold. Not enough gold. Not enough gold.” My eyes went wide, my skin went pale, and I looked at my gold count: 117g.

Yeah, I set the snatch list price higher than I had intended to and instead of spending a couple thousand on a few stacks, I blew all 17,000g on Obsidium Ore for prices WAY over what it was worth.

I’m not going to lie, I didn’t make that money back. I made about 12k back over time, but I still didn’t have my Mage’s enchanting maxed just yet and I still had to buy all of the extra recipes from TH as well. I also gave a lot of enchanting mats to my wife so that she could level her enchanting as well. Did I get my money’s worth? Well, probably. But I didn’t get the money back.

I consider that to be the dumbest mistake I’ve ever made in my WoW career. The addon did exactly what I told it to, I just didn’t bother watching what it was doing and instead just click-click-click’ed my way to bankruptcy. I recovered well enough, all things considered, but it was still a dumb mistake.

Psynister Finally Levels Alts
After getting back on my feet a bit, all professions maxed across all toons, I decided I had had enough of making a fool of myself and got back on track with my original plan of leveling alts.

I’ll be honest with you here, I don’t even remember all of the alts that I’ve rolled since Cataclysm went live a month and a half ago. I do know that I have leveled every class to some extent since the expansion went live, but I’ve rolled so many I couldn’t give you an honest count as some classes I’ve even rolled and rerolled multiple times already.

I wasn’t expecting any changes to the Death Knight starting area since it was Wrath content, and that’s just what happened – no changes to the experience. I did find that I still love the Frost tree more than the others, but oddly I found that I don’t care much for playing Unholy anymore. I’m not sure what it is really, it just feels a little off. I have a Blood offspec on my 84.3 DK, but I haven’t really played with it much yet.

I’ve done a lot of playing around with different low level Druids in this expansion, but they just aren’t holding my interest very well at all right now. I’m having fun on my 85 Druid still, but leveling the new ones just isn’t happening. I’ve started to level four that I can think of right away, but I don’t think any of them made it to level 20 before they got deleted.

I’ve had a lot more fun than ever before with the Hunter class, but something always comes up that makes me lose interest for a couple of weeks and then I just can’t get back into them. I reached a new personal record for Hunter leveling of 32, but I’m just not feeling it. I like the new Hunter a lot, but it just doesn’t seem to be able to hold my interest long enough just yet. I’ll give it another shot once the craze starts to wear off a bit though.

The Mage still continues to be one of my favorite classes, and my wife and I have both done a lot with Mages since the expansion was released. They did an excellent job of making low level Mages feel a lot more powerful and far less boring than they once were and my wife has really enjoyed playing one for the first time. We both created Recruit A Friend accounts with the expansion so that we could both get the rocket mount to fly each other around on, and most of the toons she’s leveled on the RAF accounts have been Mages because she just enjoys them that much. High level Magery is fun right now too, though I’ve set Arcane aside for the time being as I’m having a blast with both Fire and Frost.

And out of nowhere, the Paladin has reemerged as my favorite class to play. When I do get back around to feeling like spending a lot of time with high level toons, there’s a good chance I’m going to be a Paladin tank. I haven’t decided on the offspec just yet, though I’m leaning towards Holy. I know Prot inside and out, and I’m fairly comfortable with Ret, but I think I’d rather him roll a tank/heals setup. I love how well Blizzard changed the Paladin leveling experience; they’ve really done a fantastic job of turning boring into a blast.

Right now I am focusing on a Priest because I really want to level one and I’m getting a ton of questions and comments from readers regarding Priests. Shadow is the hot topic and Shadow is having a lot of problems right now in the leveling process, primarily in the way of mana. I’ve had five different Priests so far in this expansion, rerolling a lot to try different specs and different approaches, but this time I’m going to stick with the one…as best I can. It’s a female Dwarf, so I might reroll if I just can’t stand playing the race, but otherwise I intend to take her all the way.

Rogues really aren’t doing it for me right now. I deleted my level 70 Rogue that I was putting a lot of time and effort into prior to 4.x being released, and then after it hit I just lost interest in him. I’ve tried leveling new Rogues twice now, and I made one of them a twink that I still have, but…I’m just not digging it. I think the Rogue I still have is getting deleted tonight. I don’t know what changed, but I just don’t care to play them anymore. Maybe later?

Shaman is my odd duck right now. I’m enjoying them, but I’m not. I want to play them, but I don’t. I want to roll a new one, but then I delete before logging in. I don’t know what’s going on with me and Shamans right now. I had a Resto twink that was doing fantastic, but I decided I wanted to level him instead so I got him to 20 and then stopped. I switched him to Elemental because I really want to play that, ran a few BG’s and dungeon and had a good time with him. And then I stopped again. It’s like I want to play the class when I’m not playing them, but once I start playing them I lose interest. Not giving up on this one yet though.

The Warlock keeps weaving back and forth in my list of wants and don’t wants. I have a level 14 Gnome that I rolled last week and had a ton of fun on, but I think he’s about to get deleted. I think it’s the fact that he’s a Gnome, I just don’t do well with Gnomes and I knew that before I rolled him. But still, I want to give the Warlock another shot. I’ve considered having my 80 Warlock restored, but…I don’t know, I’m not sure yet.

I’ve had a blast playing on low level Warriors this expansion, and it’s one of the few classes that I’ve actually spent some time with in all three talent trees. The only tree I’ve given a decent amount of time to is Fury, but I don’t think it’s the spec I really want to play. I’m more interested in going for a Prot Warrior than the other two specs. I did enjoy them all, though.

Psynister Pseeks Pfeedback
Alright, the three P thing didn’t really work in that title, but whatever. I’m the author here so I’ve got creative license and all that jazz. Or, something.

Anyway, I’m looking for some feedback from you all on what classes you’ve had fun leveling, or which classes you’ve struggled with. Or even the ones that you’re curious about from things you’ve heard, read or seen.

What kind of impressions have you had with leveling in this expansion, whether it’s 80-85 or any other level range.

27 responses to “Leveling Like Crazy”

I like the new lower areas. They kept some of the old familiars but have new stuff around the 20s I like. I have yet to go back and do more lower level touring but plan to on a goblin lock soon named Tootsiee. :P I have to admit about yelling ‘uncle’ on the expansion zones. I have 3 85s and one 83 rising and I need a change of scenery. Perhaps Tootsiee will get a visit this weekend.

I hear you. I’ve got three 85’s and the DK who’s still sitting at 84.3. I still like Hyjal, but all of the other zones are already old and boring.

I really enjoy playing the Goblin race, even if I don’t care all that much for the goblin starting area as a whole. It feels sort of gimmicky and just doesn’t really fit in with anything else. I love the racials though and most of the other things about the race itself. If my primary server and guild weren’t Alliance, I’m pretty sure I’d have 70% or better Goblin toons.

So, I think I mentioned here that despite playing regularly since the Wrath release, I’ve never gotten a character to level cap. Well, that’s still true, but I’m making *excellent* progress with an Undead Warlock (yes, the Undead starter zones are incredible – I was not excited about the Forsaken, but I’m a total convert now). She’s now level 66 and trudging through Outland – which I’ve never played before and is STILL a downer. But the Warlock class is a blast – it feels a bit like a hunter without the utter uselessness in melee. [Trivia: Warlock was the second character I ever rolled – I’m doing it much better now! Seems much more powerful than two years ago, level-for-level.] She’s Affliction, partnered with a Demonologist, and they’re both mowing down the mobs.

I very much want to level a Fire Mage, but I’m determined to finish leveling the Warlock, first. My partner will likely play a Prot Pally – but that’s subject to change. Anyone have a favorite partner for a Mage?

I’m interested in your Shaman experience – I’ve never played one. I might roll a Goblin Shaman just for the starter zones and see how it feels. Any advice on picking a trial spec?

My Ret Pally hasn’t gotten any real play since 4.0, but my initial impression was…meh. Paladins got such a change, I think I’d rather start fresh. I’m worried that Priests might be the same way – I love my Disc Priest, but I may not be able to pick her back up…what can I say – the world changed and she got left behind, I fear.

The first RAF pairing I did with my wife was with me on a Prot Pally and her on a Fire Mage. It was a fantastic, brutal pairing. Any kind of melee is great to play alongside a mage, as are other DPS casters or healers. Basically, you can’t go wrong to be quite honest. Mages are just that amazing.

I enjoy all of the Shaman specs so far. Enhancement is a little easier to just roll along and kill things easily because it hits really hard, but Elemental is very nice too, especially if you’re already familiar with casters. I would suggest Enhancement for your first Shaman experience though, unless you have a strong fondness of casters in which case I’d do Elemental.

I hear you on the Ret Pally and Disc Priest feeling different though. And I would suggest you go ahead and start over with the Pally because of how much has changed. The Priest I’d leave entirely up to you. Not much has changed really in how they’re played from my experience, but if you want to reroll you should know I have no hesitation to reroll anything. ;)

I’ve really, really enjoyed leveling my hunter, whom I created after the Cat release. She’s leveled entirely in the Forsaken starting areas and has hit the ripe old age of 42- surprising, given how little I’ve actually played her.

I feel just as you do about hunters, though- I play her like a demon and then lose interest for a while, then pick it back up.

I must say leveling my pair of goblins- Sprocket and Wrocket- as a mage has been great, and as a warlock, terrible.

I get into the Goblin race much more when I’m playing a class that can fully utilize their rocket jump. I don’t know what it is, but that’s like the defining racial trait to me. So on like a hunter it’s just sort of meh, and most melee classes as well, but on casters being able to put some ground between us and keep on casting is win.

Sucks about the 17k gold blowout! Here is the characters I have played since Cata (just reactivated the game recently so not many):

Prot pally – Awesome! Pallies before cata were super boring to level as you mentioned, but leveling prot now is so simple and fast. Once you hit fifteen and can get in dungeons you almost gain a level a dungeon and tanking as prot is fun. Level 29 is the sweet spot for tanking though!

Fire mage – Great! Got him up to 45 so far with questing and pvp. Casting scorch while moving makes them much more viable in pvp, and I can’t wait until he gets mana shield for more survivability!

Affliction lock – Lame. She was to be a 29 twink, but I think this is the most boring class I have played since trying to level a priest about two years ago. I have never liked locks, and probably never will. I think the whole evil element adds to my distaste for them as well!

Druid – Leveled a druid up to 10, so I didn’t give him much of a chance. Was boring even with getting kitty at 8. A twink FC at 14 might be fun though with feral swiftness.

Yeah, that blow to my belt pouch still hasn’t been mended. I’m getting close, but it’s still not up to what it was and power leveling professions hasn’t helped much. Especially since I haven’t actually been crafting anything with them, I just got them up and then moved to a new toon. I should really fix that…

Prot Pally is amazing no matter what level you are. Once you get Hammer of the Righteous though (29), it’s game over for the mobs.

Fire Mage is a lot of fun right now. I get more DPS with my Frost spec, but I enjoy Fire a lot right now so I use it anyway. Scorch on the run was a crazy move. I don’t know what Blizz was smoking when they did that, but I’m glad they did.

I’m actually still enjoying Affliction more than the other Warlock specs, but that goes back to my love of AoE grinding and juggling DoTs on a Warlock with a dozen mobs that could kill me individually – if they could catch me – is just too cool to pass up. I really love it in BG’s too when I can look out across the field and just see my DoT Damage popping up in combat text all over everywhere. It’s a bit of a power trip. That and filling a flag carrier with DoT’s before he leaves the flag room and watching him die before he gets out of the tunnel. I love it, what can I say.

Druids are really powerful, I just wish they got their bleed sooner so that Mangle was more than just a burst of damage. It’s pretty brutal just on its own, but still.

I’ve leveled my rogue, mage, DK, druid, and paladin from 80-85. My (81) hunter is next on the docket. I’ve also leveled several (the rest of the classes) toons from 1-60+ since Cata’s release.

From a class perspective, I thoroughly enjoyed the rogue (assassination), DK (blood), and Paladin (prot). The mage (frost) wasn’t enjoyable to begin with, until I revised my leveling habits. That leaves the druid. Once I got to the point that mobs started hitting him more frequently, I liked him less and less. When I dinged 85, I said in /g Finally, now I can log off this character until the next expac. (sort of untrue, as he’s my herbalist).

The 1-60 zones (and instances) were great for leveling the other toons, but once I got to Outlands everything stalled. I did manage to push my warrior through that expac, but he stalled in Northrend.

The rest of the characters are in Hellfire, with the exception of the warlock. I deleted him at 42. This is his third delete, total levels deleted: 166. His spot is currently being occupied by a horde (I play alliance) low level PvP toon. I don’t intend to reroll the warlock, as I just can’t enjoy playing one.

Assassination is the one Rogue spec I haven’t tried yet. I suppose I should probably at least give it a shot before I give up on Rogues in general (again). Just thinking about it makes me sigh though, so I might have to put it off for a few weeks.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Blood DK’s lately, but it’s always been the least appealing spec for me. I have the offspec so I know I need to go and at least try it out. And a lot of guildies have been telling stories lately of how powerful the build is, so I’m wondering if I might get the same kind of feel with the Blood DK that I get with my Prot Pally. Even as Frost I’m nearly unkillable, but maybe Blood could push me over the edge and get me to enjoy the DK again.

I had a few times while leveling my Druid 80-85 where I was just taking such a crazy amount of damage that I considered giving up on her all together. It happened more than once and I was this close to sticking her on permanent alt status, but a couple of quest rewards later I was back to owning faces so she stuck around. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, though.

I’m right there with you on 1-60 being the most enjoyable part though, I tend to stall in Outlands on almost every toon unless they’re just a ton of fun to play. Northrend is even more of a killer for me though. It’s like there’s a massive dome of repulsion over the whole continent or something. As soon as my toon gets there I feel like logging off.

As someone who plays with Psyn on a regular basis, let me just add: yes, he HAS rolled that many toons lately. I’m glad to hear he’s lost count, because I’ve TOTALLY lost count of who he’s playing these days.

I’m trying, trying, trying not to delete alts. It’s not working well. I’m caught between wanting to work on my main (level 85 warlock), level my alts to be great profession mules, and then level to see the expansion.

I’m basically still in the same shell-shocked state I was in when the Shattering launched, now that I think about it. SO MUCH TO DO OMG.

Leveling two toons through PvP: rogue is 52 and mage is 10.

Leveling two toons through gathering: DK is 81 and druid is 65.

Leveling through LFD: Disc priest at 45.

Leveling through questing: Warrior at 20… that’s about it. I should make her an Ambassador or something.

I’m trying to decide who’s going to stay and who’s going to go in my current Durotan lineup. The Warlock is going, and the Rogue is most likely going. I’m going to keep all of the high level toons for professions if nothing else.

The 20 Shaman is up in the air, though I’m trying to talk myself into keeping him at least until I get him to 40.

The Priest I’m going to make an honest to goodness attempt to take all the way to 85 with a nice combination of LFG, PvP, gathering and questing.

The Warrior I know I’m going to talk myself out of unless I get Fyn to RAF him with me. It will mean that I can’t blog very well about leveling one, but playing one might help me level another one just to cover the 1-60 range enough to allow me to blog it. We’ll see.

I still have over half of the Vanilla content that I haven’t revisited yet though, so there’s still a ton of stuff for me to do. You just have to remember, there’s no rush here at all. There’s a lot of stuff we want to do, but it’s not like there’s an expansion coming in a month that’s going to change the world on us or anything. ;)

– My raiding main for now, Anshul (tauren holy/ret paladin), is busy gearing up. It’s fun, but I’ll be glad when the new Mastery goes in for ret and tones down the RNG dependence just a little. Of course, I’m mostly raiding as holy, racking up everyone’s repair bills. Oh – and he has knitting needles too. I love tailoring!

– I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on my warlock, newly goblinized, but mostly alternating between LFG, skilling up his profs (he’s a double gatherer, mining/herb) and archaeology to close the gap between 74 (where he started Cataclysm) and 80. I’m just tired of looking at snow. He dinged 78 last night, and I’m enjoying it. Soon as he hits 80 he’s going to Hyjal.

– I have a recruit-a-friend pair going with two more months to go, a goblin rogue (leader) and orc mage (follower).

– And I have a wee tauren priest and undead hunter who could use a little love.

By the way, there were two small changes to the death knight starting area, but you wouldn’t notice them unless you rolled a worgen or goblin death knight. The NPC you have to kill in that one quest near the end – you know, the one who always recognizes you – establishes the answer to the oft-asked “why do worgen or goblin death knights make sense?” question. Lord Harford, the worgen death knight’s victim, mentions the two of you breaking free of Arugal’s control; for goblins, Gally Lumpstain (what an awful name) establishes that the two of you were part of the Steamwheedle Cartel – http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/758739-Spoiler-Worgen-Death-Knights .

Well dang, I never even tried rolling Worgen/Goblin DK’s, but it makes sense that they would have to make the change to explain the new races. I stand corrected! /salute

I’m definitely with you on the whole snow thing. I can’t stand playing in the Gnome/Dwarf starting area anymore for that vary reason. I wish Deathwing would have breathed just a little bit harder and melted every flipping bit of it. That’s the only reason I can stand OL more than NR – no snow.

How good is the leveling from gathering in Northrend? Is it about the same experience as killing a mob of your level? I know doing it in Outlands I got more experience from just gathering than I did killing mobs, so I just avoided it all together and farmed the herbs.

This is a great post. I have been going round and round on which of my guys to level and I never seem to be able to settle on one for very long. I did manage to get my Dwarf Pally up to 85 but since then I have not only switched between characters but between factions as well.

I agree about the Goblins being fantastic though. I just wish I could move on to Eversong or Durotar with one around level 5 or so. Getting out of the second half of the Goblin starting experience really kills me. I have managed to do it twice so far but I need a few weeks before I am willing to go though it all again. Still, they are now my favorite Horde race next to the Tauren so I will keep making them :)

Yeah, the Worgen have the same problem. I really wanted to try out a level 10 Worgen twink only to find out that you cannot get one out of there at that level, you have to complete all of the quests which gives you too much experience. And I’d like to skip the Worgen area almost as much as I would the Goblin, but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it.

My experience in beta bumped the Tauren up to my favorite Horde race, but I have to say the only thing keeping the Goblins from overtaking them is the class selection. If I could have a Goblin Paladin there would be no stopping them. Though, if I could be a Tauren Rogue or Warlock they’d jump right back up into the lead.

Leveling alts. Have stopped on all of mine. I am planning a transfer of my warrior and death knight when I can. I thought I would be deleting just about them all, but I think only the paladin will be deletion fodder for now. He’s a chapter that needs to come to an end.

For the most part I am full blast on getting as raid ready as I can gear wise. I’m also trying to avoid the getting the grindy feeling. Overall though, I’m a happy camper.

What kinds of things are you doing in gearing up your toon to avoid the feel of grinding? Gear grinds at end game are one of the reasons I don’t care much for end game play. I’m open for suggestions on making it feel less like a grind though, I might actually end up with some gear.

Right now I’m just leveling my sub rogue slowly (43) and having a good time.
Went through the Gilneas quests which was fun and now going up the Eastern Kingdoms.

I’m loving the revamped zones.
When I first got to Hillsbrad I got quite a shock.
The quest line with Bravo Company in Redridge was really cool and I recently did the Buccaneers line n Booty Bay which was truly awesome! It possibly passed the Defias quest line as my favorite in the game…..not counting Wrathgate of course.

I haven’t done any questing at all in Redridge since the Shattering, and the only STV questing I’ve done has been maybe a couple of handfuls worth of quests in Northern STV. So apparently I’ve missed two of your favorite quest lines. My wife has told me about the Bravo Company ones though, so I at least know what you’re referring to there.

If you haven’t done the quests near the great scar in Blasted Lands…I think it’s BL…crap, the zone where the Horde city Kargath is and the Ulduman instance – there are three NPC’s standing at the western end of the scar that have a fantastic quest line.